Building Life-like Robots: From Musculoskeletal Designs to Biohybrid Innovations

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• Prof Robert Katzschmann, ETH, Zurich
• Friday 29 November 2024, 16:00-17:00
• JDB Seminar Room, CUED.

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Abstract: Nature’s musculoskeletal design can inspire both artificial and living robots to create systems that can better interact within our unstructured world. There is value in rethinking how we design and control robots by replacing traditional designs centred around electromagnetic motors and gearboxes with a bio-inspired approach that uses contractive muscles, ligaments, tendons, and skeletons. Taking it even a step further, living robots represent the next frontier in engineering materials for robotic systems, incorporating biological living cells and synthetic materials into their design. These bio-hybrid robots are dynamic and intelligent, potentially harnessing living matter’s capabilities, such as growth, regeneration, morphing, biodegradation, and environmental adaptation. Such attributes position bio-hybrid devices as a transformative force in robotics development, promising enhanced dexterity, adaptive behaviours, sustainable production, robust performance, and environmental stewardship. In this talk, we will explore recent advances in artificial electrohydraulic musculoskeletal robots, which employ electrohydraulic actuators to produce lifelike muscle contractions and adaptive motions, as demonstrated in our recent work published in Nature Communications. We will also dive deeper into our breakthroughs in vision-controlled inkjet printing for robotics from our Nature and xolographic biofabrication techniques, which enabled our biohybrid swimmers presented at RoboSoft. Additionally, we will discuss the computational optimisation of musculoskeletal robotic hands from our recent work presented at Humanoids. The talk will showcase how musculoskeletal, bio-hybrid, and computational techniques open new frontiers in robotics interaction and manipulation.

Bio: Robert Katzschmann is an Assistant Professor of Robotics at ETH Zurich, where he leads the Soft Robotics Lab, focusing on the design and fabrication of soft, musculoskeletal, and bio-hybrid robots that safely interact with humans and the environment. His work draws inspiration from biological systems, using soft, compliant materials to create lifelike, adaptive robots. Before joining ETH Zurich, Robert served as the Chief Technology Officer at Dexai Robotics, where he led robotic automation projects for commercial kitchens, and as a Senior Applied Scientist at Amazon Robotics. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT in 2018, where his research on soft robotics garnered media attention from outlets like The New York Times and BBC . He holds a Diplom-Ingenieur degree from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany. Robert’s contributions to the robotics community include serving as an editor for leading journals and conferences such as IJRR , ICRA, IROS , RoboSoft, and RSS . He is also a guest editor for Science Advances and Advanced Intelligent Systems. His lab is affiliated with the Center for Robotics (RobotX), the ETH AI Center, and the ETH Max Planck Institute Center for Learning Systems, promoting collaboration in advancing robotics technologies.

This talk is part of the Engineering - Dynamics and Vibration Tea Time Talks series.

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